


the land below

by aosc



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 00:04:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6929848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aosc/pseuds/aosc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam wonders when the urge to sketch overcame his brother, when Nathan - with the shaky fingers, look over your shoulder-urge, managed to cultivate a seasoned hunch to his shoulders, managed to translate his eye for detail to everlasting stencils.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the land below

**Author's Note:**

> the spoilers in this fic are like a bunch of those giant spear-wielding UC2 statues. if you tread without caution, they will cut you. like. a lot of them. you've been duly warned. also, since it's now out there; i love sam. unhealthily. ~~which means i'm actually nate.~~

* * *

 

"Hey, they're _good_ drawings," Nathan protests, a little irate, and frowns.

 

There's a pinch to the torn and repaired, torn and repaired skin of the bridge of his nose when he does so, a relic of his baby, baby brother, that Sam has to duck and smile out of his line of sight at. It's there and gone, but he can't shake the slither of warmth in his chest, the clench of his gut, looking at Nathan from up close again. This is his little brother, grown into the gangliness of his legs, the broadness of his shoulders. He scales walls like a spooked salamander, and has picked up slang in off coast Malay that even Sam thinks is God awful (cross his heart, forgive him) and really quite offensive. He's seen El Dorado, fought Russian war criminals hanging in the exposed guts of a skeletal train off a Himalayan mountainside - Jesus, he's gone and got hitched to a _girl_. A decent girl, a Florida girl, made outta tougher stuff than he ever hoped to see for either of them.

 

This is the stuff that Sam thinks of, and marvels at.

 

He shoves Nathan lightly. "Sure, little bro, I'm sure they look good," he says.

 

"Your appreciation for art's unprecedented," Nathan says, and carefully ducks beneath the long fingered reach of a low branch.

 

Sam chuckles. "Not sure I'd ever get the urge to call you an artist, isn't that a little - cultivated, for you?"

 

"Well, there's the thing," Nathan says, and rounds the jut of a spiderweb cracked rockface, "You don't have to be a scholar to be able to sketch. C'mon, let me make a rough one."

 

Sam quirks an eyebrow, but obediently stops when Nathan puts his palm out, urging Sam to a standstill in a spear of sunlight slanting off the cliff they've just climbed. "It'll just take a couple of minutes," he promises, and slips a hand into his back pocket, coming back with a snub nosed lead pencil and a tattered, leather bound journal. Sam's unsure of how that pencil ever makes it through jungle treks, and privately wonders if his baby brother happens to carry around an arsenal of those on his trips. The pen is mightier than the sword, or however it's said to be.

 

" _A couple of minutes,_ " he parrots, "Lest you forget, Nathan, we're here on a _treasure hunt_. Pirates, yanno, big loot, Henry Avery? Would've packed my sun lounger, otherwise."

 

Nathan's shifted his weight to his left foot, crooked his right until there's a decent surface for him to put the journal down on. He's jotting down on the page, curving rough lines with his jaw ticking, eyes flicking between the motions of his hand, and Sam's face. He snorts. "Shut up, will you?" he says, "Father Duffy will haunt you for always disrupting my concentrating."

 

Sam rolls his eyes, but doesn't reply. He shifts his weight between his hips, but remains. The surrounding, rocky scenery is dusted with red sand, the savanna having spread from Southwest of Madagascar, the light lava rocks from the dormant cavities on Montagne d'Ambre. "Hey," he says, "How big a risk is it that we find the treasure site, and it's a dump full of phony Spanish gold and colored corundum? Avery pulling one over on us naïve assholes one last time."

 

Nathan laughs, a sound low in his throat, from where he's still sketching out details on what's supposed to be paper-Sam. "Well, Madagascar has some of the world's richest gemstone resources. Don't think he'd go to all the trouble for some colored mineral and dummy gold, though."

 

"Nah, you're probably right. Just thinking that - nobody's ever found it, you know?"

 

"Mm," Nathan agrees. "Then we're _really_ screwed. Alright, I'm done."

 

The minute sketch is precise, if Sam's ever gotten a good look of himself in the mirror. The curve of his jaw stops starch at the inception of a neck, his head half turned, the eyes sit deeper than Nathan's - deeper than mom's, so it's probably him who got - well, whomever's eyes. Someone else's nose, someone else's high forehead. He's taller than Nathan, and leans out where Nathan's bulked. Panamanian prison, nurture, versus nature, he doesn't really know.

 

Sam wonders when the urge to sketch overcame his brother, when Nathan - little Nathan with the shaky fingers, look over your shoulder-urge, managed to cultivate a seasoned hunch to his now broad shoulders, managed to translate his eye for detail to everlasting stencils. Wonders why he carries this around. Sure, they've discovered why keeping phones with reception wasn't such a clever idea, but that's not why his brother has painstakingly hollowed the stretch between his collar bones, or not ironed out wrinkles and long winded scrapes of dirt out of his shirt.

 

"So, these good enough for your refined palette, Sam?" Nathan says.

 

Something tight snares at his throat, and he's got to clear it before he can speak. He figures he's still just a bit too rough around the edges for this. "It's - alright. Can't qualify in there with Avery on the narcissism level, but I guess I look alright. Figures you got good at something while I was gone, huh."

 

Nathan puts the pen to rest in the juncture between the pages, and snaps the journal shut. Stray bits of photos, dogeared pages, torn postcards, peek up among its pages. And Sam's portrait is now in its collection, savored, somewhere, in his little brother's grown up chronicles of his personal finds and thoughts.

 

" _Figures you got good_ ," Nathan mutters, and pockets the journal. Ahead of them is an uneven mountain wall rising out of the ocean, froth and squall loud beneath their feet, and he resolutely stalks up ahead of Sam, to where the wall connects to the grassy plain they're coming from. Nathan turns, a challenge mounting in the set of his mouth. "I'll show you good, old man."

 

*

**Author's Note:**

> sam!!
> 
> a few notes: i'm a little uncomfortable with using _nathan_ rather than _nate_ , but if you've noticed, sam never once calls him nate, so, i figure he also thinks of his lil bro as nathan. hence the usage. the comment about nate's drawings is also used way earlier in the game than where i've made use of it (i think it's in the scotland chapters), but see it as a bit of self indulgent canon divergence. i'm in madagascar now, so it got a little tangled up time-wise, and when i realized, i was already finishing this up. oops.


End file.
